ELEC-E7210

Communications Theory - Fall 2017

Tutorial 3

28.Sep.2017

Question 1
Suppose that the instantaneous SNR of each of M independent diversity
branches is dened by the r.v. Xm , with PDF
1 − γx
fm (x) = e m, m ∈ [1, M ]
γm

where γ m is the average SNR of the m-th branch. Consider a communication

system that employs selection combining to obtain diversity gain against
fading, i.e. the system simply selects the branch with the highest SNR. Find
the distribution of the instantaneous SNR of this selection diversity system.

Question 2
Consider a channel with M diversity branches and i.i.d. Rayleigh fading on
each branch.
a) Find the outage probability under Selection Combining (SC) for M = 1 (no
diversity), M = 2, and M = 3. Assume QPSK modulation with Ps = 10−3
and branch SNRs γ 1 = 10dB, γ 2 = 15dB, and γ 3 = 20dB.
b) Compare the outage probabilities under Maximal Ratio Combining (MRC)
and Equal Gain Combining (EGC), assuming BPSK modulation with Pb =
10−3 , two-branch diversity and an average branch SNR of γ = 10dB.

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Question 3
Consider a transmission where 512 information bits are encoded with a
rate 1/2 turbo code to 1024 coded bits, then these are mapped to 512
QPSK symbols and transmitted over an AWGN channel with SNR γ . The
block-error-rate (BLER) of this system can be modelled by the function

PB (γ) = 1 − [1 + c1 γ −c2 ]−c3 ,

where c1 = 2.87, c2 = 23.21, and c3 = 9.72. Compare this turbo-coded

system to an uncoded system with the same information rate transmitting
n = 512 uncoded BPSK symbols. The symbol-error rate (SER) for BPSK
can be approximated by PS (γ) ≈ e 2 and then the BLER for n uncoded bits
−γ

is
PB (γ, n) = 1 − [1 − PS (γ)]n .
Throughput (i.e. the expected rate of correctly decoded blocks of information
bits per s/Hz), is dened as T = r log2 (M )(1 − PB (γ)), where r is the FEC
rate and M is the modulation order. Assume that the target throughput
is 0.9 bps/Hz. Calculate the required SNR in the coded and uncoded case.
What is the coding gain (in dB) obtained by employing the turbo code?

Question 4
It is possible to obtain diversity gain even without fading, due to noise
averaging. Consider an AWGN channel with N diversity branches and
γi = 10 dB for all i = 1, 2, ..., N . Assume M -QAM modulation with M = 4
and use the approximation Pb,MQAM ≈ 0.2e−1.5γ/(M −1) , where γ is the received
SNR.
a) Find Pb for N = 1.
b) Find N so that under MRC, Pb < 10−6 .

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 Useful Equations
√
2γ sin[π/8])
p p
Pb,BPSK ≈ Q( 2γ), Ps,QPSK ≈ 2Q( γ), Pb,8PSK ≈ 0.67Q(
M M  M  i−1
Y Y γ 
− γ0 γ X
− γ0 1 γ0
Pout,SC = p(γi < γ0 ) = 1−e i , Pout,MRC = 1−e
i=1 i=1 i=1
(i − 1)! γ
Z x r  r 
−λy −λx
2γ
− γ0 πγ0 − γγ0 2γ0
λe dy = 1−e , Pout,EGC = 1−e − e 1 − 2Q
0 γ γ